In a medical setting, as a method of diagnosing a pathological tissue such as a tumor (for example, determining whether or not a pathological tissue is a malignant tumor such as cancer), there is a method in which a prepared specimen is formed by collecting a piece of a pathological tissue from a patient, slicing the piece of the pathological tissue, placing, on a glass slide, a section (hereinafter referred to as “biopsy specimen”) obtained by slicing, and staining the biopsy specimen, and the prepared specimen is observed and diagnosed by a microscope or the like.
Moreover, to help such a diagnosis, there has been proposed a method in which scanning is performed on the prepared specimen, and an image similar to a diagnostic image obtained by the scanning is retrieved from a database holding case images that have been diagnosed, and is presented (for example, refer to PTL 1).